Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Bill C-43 explicitly excludes cable laying from the preferential tax treatment that applies to international shipping activities. The committee heard from Canada's only international cable laying company, International Telecom. They told us that this provision in Bill C-43 is inconsistent with how other developed countries tax cable laying and would put Canadian jobs at risk.
The government, in our view, failed to make a compelling case on why cable laying should be excluded from the definition of, in this case, “international shipping”. As such, we are proposing an amendment that supports the status quo and opposes this change. This amendment both removes cable laying from the list of exceptions to international shipping, and for greater clarity explicitly includes cable laying as part of international shipping.
We prefer our amendment to the NDP amendment, as our amendment provides greater clarity that cable laying is, in fact, a recognized activity that is connected to international shipping.